Obama flips again: gay marriage

Ed MorrisseyPosted at 8:51 am on July 1, 2008

Barack Obama has reversed himself yet again, but this time he has done a double backflip with a half-twist to the Left. After previously saying he opposed gay marriage and that he respected the rights of states to set conditions for marriage, Obama has now said that he opposes California’s initiative to ban gay marriage — and that he would use federal law to end such efforts:

Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama, who previously said the issue of gay marriage should be left up to each state, has announced his opposition to a California ballot measure that would ban same-sex marriages.

In a letter to the Alice B. Toklas LGBT Democratic Club read Sunday at the group’s annual Pride Breakfast in San Francisco, the Illinois senator said he supports extending “fully equal rights and benefits to same-sex couples under both state and federal law.”

“And that is why I oppose the divisive and discriminatory efforts to amend the California Constitution, and similar efforts to amend the U.S. Constitution or those of other states,” Obama wrote.

Obama had previously said he opposes same-sex marriage but that each state should make its own decision.

His letter to the Alice B. Toklas GLBT Democratic Club will effectively toss traditional marriage under the same bus as his opposition to FISA reform and his pledge for public financing. However, his allies on the Left will enjoy the reversal on this position much more than they did with his other flip-flops, even if they have to wonder how long this new position will last.

Once again, voters have to ask themselves what Obama is thinking. I’m no big fan of the gay-marriage ban, but we’re getting past the point of the issues themselves and what all of these reversals mean about the candidate. There are only three possibilities for why Barack Obama has had to change his mind on almost every policy he has mentioned in this campaign:

He’s a liar who says what each audience wants to hear.

The election debate has changed his perspective on every issue.

He has no clue on any of the issues.

Only the second reflects any positive quality, that of open-mindedness, but it also carries with it the underlying unreadiness of a man who has only three years of national political experience for the Presidency. Assuming the best of intentions, Obama has no firm stands on any principle or policy. That doesn’t even recommend Obama as a Senator, let alone a President. If option 2 is the case, he needs to set out this election while he makes up his mind.

The most disturbing aspect of this new reversal is Obama’s sudden abandonment of federalism. What happened to letting California decide on the public recognition of marriage? This twist reveals a little more of what we can expect from a President Obama — a further aggrandizing of power in Washington DC and a reduction of the scope of authority for state and local communities.

Rumor has Team Obama bolstering its outreach to evangelicals. How long before this reversal gets reversed?